The task: Editorial conceptual illustration.

For this first Task I have been given 2 weeks to create a editorial piece for an article I have been given at random. The illustration I am to create is of 900mmx140mm and must have a print version and a animated gif version for the website. I will create a website mock-up of the article with my illustration further down this website page.

Peter Brookes.

Peter Brookes stood out to me in lecture as an artist I should look at. He seemed to use a lot of hatching in his work and I have been interested in hatching since semester one this year. When I took a look for myself I noticed his artwork has evolved over the years and he is infact still making more up to date political cartons with a slight different style.
I like the watercolour look of his pieces and how things are coloured and shaded. I really like how his cartoons are basically visual metaphors.. I think I will take this onboard.

Nathan Hackette

Nathans work has a very clean, modern and digital look to it. I actually like this a lot surprisingly. Some of his illustrations (like the one above) he doesn't put much detail in the people he draws, for example just dots for eyes. Alongside though, they are all in proportion and believable next to one another. I think body language is much easier to get across this way as you don't have to focus on facial expressions as much.

My Article.

'Department stores are far more than just shops. Their loss leaves a hole in the heart'
My article basically points out how we are losing the high street and most towns are ditched by big companies leaving only the few small businesses to struggle. Its highlighted how Debenhams has recently had to shut down and how if the government just stepped in they could have easily saved it from shutting its doors for the final time.
Some of the quotes I highlighted include : 'Demise of Debenhams', 'revive our high streets', 'Charity shops and pubs decayed', left behind towns'.
You can view the article yourself here: ​https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/28/department-stores-shops-loss-leaves-hole-heart-debenhams-government-high-street
​As the article talks about the high street dying almost personifying shopping centres, I think that's the route I'd like to take my illustration down for definite. I firstly played around with the idea of a 'haunted house' feel, like having little ghost figures owning the shops and the shops 'decaying'. I also had a play around with  the shop drowning, or the house being a person. then I struck gold with the idea of the shop being in hospital.
I was really happy with the concept of the shop dying in hospital with lack of government funding, I thought this summed up the article as a whole in a comedic way. One thing that was commented on in my semester one feedback is that I still haven quite grasped perspective. I wanted to take the opportunity with this short task to have perspective in my final outcome. Here is me using one point perspective to figure out how to fit the bed into the room on one of my thumbnails above.
After figuring this out I thought the image would look better zoomed in a little, frame the bed better.
Unfortunately in tutorial it was brought to my attention that my work so far was more like a political cartoon than an conceptual illustration. I was told that the image should be readable without words, and also to take advantage of the fact I have also been asked for an animated version. 
I like the idea of having a line up of shops turning over to reveal gravestones. I also had the idea of the sun possibly setting making the shops turn into gravestones but after more thought I was worried this would just come across as a haunted shopping centre.
I think this could work out looking very graphic and smooth. I just couldn't wrap my head around how to draw it.
That's when I had the idea to make a short mock-up out of plasticine, the plan is to trace the photos to get my proportions right and make it an animation.
This thumbnail was pointed out to me as an interesting concept to play around with. Having the shop turn into gravestones.
I went away with that idea in mind and quite liked the idea of it so decided to make some more thumbnails.
This was the turnout for the little gravestone gifs I made, I think the 4th is the nicest angled, I will now take these images into procreate and trace them roughly to see how it would work.
I am very happy with how this method ended up turning out. I plan on recreating this across the page to create different houses falling at different times.

Failed attempts.

Final gif

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